Norfolk Master Gardeners
830 Southampton Ave., Ste 2069
Norfolk, Virginia 23510-1045
Crape Myrtle Pruning Brings Joy
Roy Gregory got a happy surprise on his 87th birthday on June 16 – learning that in two days volunteers would prune crape myrtles in his Larchmont neighborhood.
Norfolk Master Gardener Judy Davis, a neighbor from three blocks away Roy did not know, delivered the good news that NMGs and the Larchmont-Edgewater Civic League were joining forces for the pruning.
Roy has lived in his Larchmont home since 1935 and worried about overgrown crape myrtles on city property but wasn’t sure how to help the unruly trees. Pointing across the street, he noted “crape myrtle suckers at least eight feet high.”
Judy and I helped recruit neighborhood volunteers for the June 18 pruning event in various ways, including delivering flyers Judy created to homes along streets that Crape Myrtle Pruning Project Leaders Paulette Crawford and Ginger Farrell identified as needing attention.
“Roy was so thrilled and came right over to tell me about the pruning,” said Roy’s neighbor Liz Paiste, who had heard about the event online through the civic league electronic newsletter and nextdoor.com. “For Roy, who does not use the Internet, it was like learning that Christmas was coming,” Liz said.
Roy was only four months old when he moved into the white clapboard Colonial Williamsburg-style house his father built. He recalls six crape myrtles getting planted in the 1940s on the verge around his home.
In three hours on a sunny Saturday, 14 Norfolk Master Gardeners and 16 neighborhood volunteers pruned 164 trees on the east side of Larchmont, including those along Roy’s property. Steven Traylor, city forester, taught safety techniques and loaned pruning tools, yellow vests and safety goggles. He also brought a city crew to promptly gather tree cuttings. Master Gardeners taught proper techniques as they led small teams of volunteers to prune along streets mapped by Paulette and Ginger.
Pruning volunteers like K.T. Vick, who has two young two crape myrtles in front of his home, liked the “sense of community and learning how to keep our neighborhood’s precious crape myrtles in good shape.”
Mike Crockett, civic league vice president, said he is “so glad I participated.” He enjoyed learning to prune while chatting with neighbors “I’d never met before who only live a block or two away.” He appreciated “random people walking past thanking us for making things look better.” Crockett hopes the civic league and NMG can team up again to beautify another part of the neighborhood. Its 2,300-plus homes are bordered by thousands of crape myrtles.
NMG intern Ellis Jones, a Larchmont resident whose 2022 class project focused on crape myrtles, continues to make his neighborhood look better. He and another newly trained pruning volunteer have taught several neighbors proper techniques. They recently worked as a team to prune 14 overgrown crape myrtles on their block.
These before and after photos of the same tree show the enormous improvement their work made. The neighbors trimmed and bundled all those cuttings, ready for city yard waste pickup.
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